Nehru permitted CIA spy planes to use Indian base

India allowed the US to use one of its air bases for refuelling the CIA's U-2 spy planes to target Chinese territories after its defeat in the 1962 war, a declassified official document said yesterday.
The then Indian Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, approved overflight by U-2 missions covering the border areas with China on November 11, 1962, the independent National Security Archive (NSA) said in a report based on the latest set of declassified documents it obtained from the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act.
According to the report the highly successful spying programmes conducted with the planes from 1954 to 1974. NSA said that the first deployment to Charbatia in May 1964 ended because Nehru died.
According to the CIA report, in October 1962, the People's Republic of China launched a series of massive surprise attacks against India's frontier forces in the western provinces of Jammu and Kashmir and in the North-East Frontier Agency.
"The Chinese overran all Indian fortifications north of the Brahmaputra Valley before halting their operations. The Indian government appealed to the United States for military aid.
"In the negotiations that followed, it became apparent that Indian claims concerning the extent of the Chinese incursions could not be reliably evaluated," it said.
"(The, then) US ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith, therefore, suggested to the Indian Government that US aerial reconnaissance of the disputed areas would provide both governments with a more accurate picture of the Communist Chinese incursions."
"On 11 November 1962, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru consented to the proposed operation and gave the United States permission to refuel the reconnaissance aircraft (U-2s) in Indian airspace," it said.